Pain could be a good thing for heart attack patients

Feeling the pain of a heart attack could actually help the heart minimise damage, say academics in the University of Bristol's School of Clinical Sciences.

The study, co-funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) and the European Union, showed that during a heart attack  when a blood clot blocks an artery serving the heart with oxygen  pain signals from cardiac nerves may help attract stem cells to the site of the blockage to repair some of the damage.

Around 124,000 people in the UK each year have a heart attack. The symptoms can include chest pain  a feeling like a belt tightening around your chest. As a blockage cuts off the oxygen supply to the heart, cells die and the heart often suffers permanent damage.

This new study, published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation, shows that a key molecule in the bodys ability to sense pain, called Substance P, is released from nerve terminals in the heart during a heart attack. Substance P then mobilises stem cells from the bone marrow to the site of the artery blockage. The stem cells have the ability to generate new vessels to bypass the blockage and restore some of the blood flow.

After initial experiments in mice, the researchers went on to show that the Substance P released by cardiac nerves may play a role in stem-cell mediated recovery after a heart attack in human patients. The discovery points to a new possible route for future therapies to repair a damaged heart.

Professor Paolo Madeddu, Chair of Experimental Cardiovascular Medicine in the School of Clinical Sciences and Bristol Heart Institute at the University of Bristol, who led the study, said: After a heart attack, the heart cant mend itself properly. Thats why tens of thousands of heart attack patients in the UK are affected by the debilitating symptoms of heart failure.

Our discovery shows that pain receptors are involved in repairing damaged blood vessels, through recruiting stem cells, could point towards new ways to harness the bodys natural mechanisms of repair. The ultimate aim is to develop a therapy which will regenerate the muscle damaged or lost after a heart attack.

Dr Hélène Wilson, Research Advisor at the British Heart Foundation (BHF), which co-funded the study, said: Pain is a very complicated process. Its not just the bodys way of warning you that something is wrong  when we feel pain, it can also be a sign that the body is doing what it can to fix the problem.

As well as opening up exciting new avenues for new heart repair treatments, this discovery highlights the potential role of pain in our natural response to having a heart attack. The pain of a heart attack is extremely distressing for patients, and we have to do everything we can to keep it to a minimum. But this discovery opens up the possibility that in the future we might be able to harness pain more effectively in the crucial window just after a heart attack, when there could be an opportunity to keep damage to a minimum.

The study was funded by a £200,242 research grant from the BHF and a grant from the European Union.

More information: Role for Substance P-based nociceptive signaling in progenitor cell activation and angiogenesis during ischemia in mice and in human subjects, Silvia Amadesi, et al, Circulation 2012, originally published online March 5, 2012. doi: 10.1161/​CIRCULATIONAHA.111.089763

Related Stories

(PhysOrg.com) -- Human trials of stem cell therapy for post-heart attack patients have raised as many questions as they have answered -- because while the patients have tended to show some improvement in heart ...

Scientists have for the first time succeeded in extracting vital stem cells from sections of vein removed for heart bypass surgery. Researchers funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) found that these stem cells can ...

In the first trial of its kind in the world, 60 patients who have recently suffered a major heart attack will be injected with selected stem cells from their own bone marrow during routine coronary bypass surgery.

In 2008, physicians at the West Virginia University Heart Institute became the first in the state to use the Impella left ventricular assist device. Now, they are among the first in the nation to use it in ...

Recommended for you

Alcoholism takes a toll on every aspect of a person's life, including skin problems. Now, a new research report appearing in the April 2015 issue of the Journal of Leukocyte Biology, helps explain why this happens and wh ...

An estimated eight million adults in the U.S. suffer from binge eating disorder. Now, researchers have shown that compulsive binging on foods that are high in fat and sugar can trigger specific molecular changes that can ...

Scientists have recently discovered a link between inflammation and depression, which affects approximately 148 million people in the United States. A new study finds that resveratrol—a natural anti-inflammatory agent found ...

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences used information collected from hundreds of skin swabs to produce three-dimensional maps of molecular ...

User comments

Please sign in to add a comment.
Registration is free, and takes less than a minute.
Read more

Click here to reset your password.
Sign in to get notified via email when new comments are made.